Go for Real World Applications

Name: Go for Real World Applications
Rating: 4.4 (10 reviews)

Writing, testing, Dockerizing, and deploying Go apps

Created byChris Frewin

Last updated 5/2023

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Scaffolding a go project and writing a main go file as well as additional packages
Dockerizing a Go application
Writing basic tests in Go
Orchestrating a CI/CD pipeline that first runs tests the deploys the Dockerize go application to Docker Hub

Course content

4 sections • 19 lectures • 1h 50m total length

Introduction and Overview0:52
Harness go as a powerful backend language with built-in json serialization, deserialization, and testing. Scaffold a project from scratch, dockerize the application, and automate a ci/cd workflow with CircleCI.
Why Go?5:15
Discover why Go excels for real world apps, offering blazing performance, a single main.go deployment, built-in testing, Json serialization, and uniform formatting for fast backend development.
What We're Going to Build & the Allergy API2:27
build a real world pollen alert app that messages you daily with the day's expected pollen level and its historical average using the University of Vienna API endpoints.
Application Requirements1:29
Define daily allergy endpoints flow, parse json responses, format messages for Slack via webhooks, and automate tests, docker container management, and ci pipelines with configurable endpoints and cron settings.

Environment Setup - Install Go1:13
Verify your go installation with go version and install from go.dev/doc/install. Install the go extension in Visual Studio Code, a linter, tester, debugger, and formatter, then scaffold the go project.
Scaffold the App1:47
Scaffold the app by installing go and the Visual Studio Code Go extension, creating a project folder allergy cron, initializing the module with go mod init, and creating main.go.
Building the Cron Job6:07
Implement a daily 8 a.m. cron job in go using the robfig cron library, load the Vienna time zone, start the scheduler, and keep the main thread alive.
Building a Generic HTTP Utility Function8:57
Develop a generic Go HTTP request utility using generics to handle allergy API calls and Slack messages, including query params, headers, and JSON unmarshalling.
Calling the Allergy API and Parsing the Response15:39
Call the allergy api with a generic http request function, define types for hourly load and current chart data, parse json, compute the historical average, and format a slack message.
Creating a Slack App and Messaging Function6:07
Create a Slack app with incoming webhooks, obtain the webhook URL, and implement a Go utility to post messages to Slack from real-world applications.
Completing main.go3:15
Complete main.go by combining hourly load data and current chart data into a single Slack message using daily and historical averages, and send it via the Slack message utility.
Running the Application2:13
Update the cron to the next minute, run go run main.go, and verify the slack message with the pollen load is sent, while noting upcoming environment-based optimizations and testing.

Writing Tests7:48
Write Go tests for the allergy API and Slack message functions, place tests in a tests folder with _test.go files, and run go test -p 1 -v tests.
Dockerize the Application4:58
Dockerize the go application by creating a dockerfile and a docker compose file, building a single binary, and running it in a container with a restart policy and background mode.
Restarting the Container with Minimal Downtime2:19
Replace a running docker container with minimal downtime by rebuilding with no cache and using docker compose up --detach --force-recreate; not zero downtime, suitable for cron jobs.
Adding Fancy Formatting to the Slack Messages6:25
Enhance Slack messages with color and emojis for real-time allergy data using a format allergy data function with a scaled load switch, env file, and CircleCI deployment to Docker Hub.
Move Secrets and Hardcoded Values to an .env File8:11
Move secrets and hardcoded values to an .env file, including API URL, Slack webhook, time zone, and cron schedule, and load them with a Go env package.
Create a CI/CD Pipeline with Circle CI24:28
Create a complete ci/cd pipeline with CircleCI to build, test, and deploy a Docker image to Docker Hub, using a config.yaml with jobs, workflows, environment variables, and workspace persistence.

Requirements

Some minor exposure to go, at least its syntax, would be helpful
Experience with shells as well as git

Description

Go is a powerful backend language that is an asset to any developer's toolkit. It is extremely performant, a relatively easy language in terms of syntax, and has many valuable features like testing and JSON serialization and deserialization built in. In this practical, hands-on, step-by-step style course, we'll build a fully functioning Go application from complete scratch along these steps:

- Scaffolding the Go application and writing main.go

- Writing cron jobs in Go

- Writing a powerful generic HTTP function

- Using that HTTP function to call an API and serialize the response into Go object's using Go

- Use that HTTP function to POST messages to a Slack channel

- Write tests using Go's built in testing module

- Dockerize the application so that it can be run with docker compose

- Round off the course by crafting a complete CI/CD pipeline that first builds and tests our application, then Dockerizes and uploads the application to Docker Hub

- We'll see that once the Circle CI pipeline is setup, we can control the entire pipeline process through pushing to a git branch alone, and never have to manually do any sort of configuration or commands for our deploys

By the end of the course, you will have the confidence and know how to build Go applications from start to finish - including testing, Dockerizing, and deploying them!

Who this course is for:

Beginner to Intermediate developers who want to write their Go
Advanced developers coming from other languages who want to see the moving parts of a Go application

Go for Real World Applications

What you'll learn

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Course content

Introduction4 lectures • 10min

Building the Application8 lectures • 45min

Testing, Optimizing, and Deploying the Application6 lectures • 54min

Review and Final Comments1 lecture • 1min

Requirements

Description

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